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How Big Is Your Wrist Watch?

When researching and writing my book, Five Ways Your Design is Sabotaging Your Sales, I rediscovered how extremely vulnerable people are to being influenced by visual stimuli.

For example, when something looks nice, people assume it also works well.

Apple has gorgeous design. But there are other phones, laptops, and computers that work just as well or better in terms of functionality. Nonetheless, Apple is perceived to be the market leader in innovation and technology. (In reality, they’re #2 behind Microsoft).

As another example, tall men are regarded as being smarter or stronger than short men. Slap a giant, expensive watch on their wrist and they are perceived to be successful and powerful too. Seriously.

If a $10,000 wristwatch is not in your budget, consider this:

As a professional, your prospects and potential clients haven’t a clue about the actual quality of your service. Those things are unmeasurable and indeterminable by the average person.

If you have written books, have a good newsletter, a good website and regularly connect with your prospects, then you are miles ahead of your competitors.

If not, then your potential clients will get their cues elsewhere. Usually, it’s perceived by how your marketing looks. Their decisions about how competent and successful you are will be based on how you present yourself.

At my company, Zine, we firmly believe your marketing should look like you know what you’re doing. If it looks haphazard and sloppy or just average, then your services will be perceived as haphazard, sloppy, or average.

Investing in your image will give your prospects the confidence to invest in you as well.

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When Ugly Gets All The Chicks

There is this phenomena in direct marketing called “the ugly postcard.”

In test after test, when a plain, “un-designed” postcard was tested against a slick, shiny postcard, the ugly postcard out-performed the shiny one hands-down.

I bet you’re saying, “Yeah! Explain that, Miss Fancy Pants Designer!”

Well, maybe you’re not saying that. But I’ll explain anyway.

Did you read the post about giant wristwatches? Aesthetics (visual appearance) is not so much about how beautiful something is. It’s about the response that is elicited. (You might want to read that sentence again).

A lowbrow design has power equal to a high-end design in influencing perception.

That means an ugly design can elicit responses such as “easy to work with,” “affordable,” or “honest.” Or it could be part of your brand (like Craigslist’s look). Or it could just be that it stands out from all the shiny, “smart-looking” marketing competing for attention.  

So what’s an aspiring entrepreneur to do? Ugly or slick?

First, don’t go all ugly on yourself unless that is part of your message and your brand.

This concept is more powerful in direct marketing efforts, but much harder to pull off as a brand message.

If you’re sending a postcard or a sales letter, try a plain, undesigned look and see what kind of results you get.

Good marketing hinges on testing. So be bold and try different things.

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Political No-Rant Zone

I’m sure many of you are glad the election season is behind us. I certainly don’t miss the wild rhetoric and non-stop news coverage.   

But as a marketing professional I find myself pondering the marketing, and noticed a very significant principle that I talk about in a previous post.

Trump’s campaign nailed it. Hillary’s campaign missed it.

In Simon Sinek’s book, Start With Why, he makes a case that strong, prosperous companies have a bigger purpose for what they do. And
it is never just about their profits or their own growth. It’s about something bigger, ethereal, and transformative.

For example, Apple’s why is to think different and challenge the status quo. They just happen to make computers. On the other hand, Tevo, a company that created an extraordinary, high-quality gadget for improving your TV experience, has a why that fell flat: convenience and low price. Not very inspiring. And not surprisingly, they hardly prospered.

What was Trump’s why? It’s in his slogan: Make America Great Again. It wasn’t about him. It was about something bigger and transformative.

What about Hillary? Her slogan was: I’m With Her. What does that communicate about her big why, her purpose, her focus? If she had a bigger purpose, it wasn’t communicated well.

I’m not interested in arguing political platforms and rhetoric. I’m making an observation that illustrates an important principle and serves as another reminder to ponder your reason for doing what you do.

Your what (your actions, products, services) serves as proof of your why. But if people don’t know or don’t believe in your why, your what becomes meaningless, a commodity.

So why does your business exist? To make a profit or provide great service is uninspiring and unremarkable.

What greater purpose do you embody?  And how can people be inspired and believe in it so much that they give you their trust, loyalty, engagement,
and ultimately, their money?

People are naturally inclined towards self-preservation and self-interest. But can you think beyond that for a moment?

Sinek says it like this: “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe.”

Your big why is often revealed in your story. If you can incorporate your story in your marketing message, your why will emerge, and you will attract more people more powerfully and more effectively than the traditional benefit/cost/value marketing strategies.

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The Tyranny of Jargon

“Please review the print mock up carefully. The PDF file has bleeds so we’re showing it to you in spreads to ensure the inside margins align and images are hi-res and do not appear pixellated.”

As a designer, I’m careful to NEVER use that sentence in an email to my clients. It is industry jargon. While it is beautiful and perfectly clear to me, it is maddening nonsense to the non-designer.

If you’re a marketer, then you may also be guilty of assaulting people with jargon. Here’s a test. Have you used any of these words or phrases recently in your marketing:

“flexible,” “robust,” “world class,” “scalable,” and “easy to use”?

Or “cutting edge,” “mission critical,” “market leading,” “industry standard,” “turnkey,” and “groundbreaking”?

How about “interoperable,” “best of breed,” and “user friendly”? And my personal favorite, “dynamic.”

Marketer David Meerman Scott calls these “gobbledygook phrases.” He decided to find out just how overused these words were. By analyzing 338,000 news release wires over a 9 month period, he found that 74,000 of them mentioned at least one of the gobbledygook phrases. The winner was “next generation,” with 9,895 uses. The runners-up are in the list above.

His disdain for these phrases is aimed directly at the writers. He claims that because these writers don’t understand how their products solve customer problems, they cover by explaining how the product works using meaningless industry jargon.

Instead, they should write with their buyers in mind, not the product. It goes back to explaining how your product or service will benefit your customer. Don’t just blather on about how great your product is. The buyer needs to understand how you can help them. Define the problem, touch on their pain points, and offer the solution. Incidentally, these are also winning traits of a good sales letter.

You can read more of David’s article at DavidMeermanScott.com.